The Woman Thou Gavest Me eBook

The suggestion was welcomed with a shout, and a broad
board was immediately laid on the first long flight
of stairs for people to slide on.

Soldiers went first, and then there were calls for
the ladies, when Alma took her turn, tucking her dress
under her at the top and alighting safely on her feet
at the bottom. Other ladies followed her example,
with similar good fortune, and then Alma, who had been
saying “Such fun! Such lots of fun!”
set up a cry of “Margaret Mary.”

I refused at first, feeling ashamed of even looking
at such unwomanly folly, but something Alma said to
my husband and something that was conveyed by my husband’s
glance at me set my heart afire and, poor feverish
and entangled fool that I was, I determined to defy
them.

So running up to the top and seating myself on the
toboggan I set it in motion. But hardly had I
done so when it swayed, reeled, twisted and threw
me off, with the result that I rolled downstairs to
the bottom.

Of course there were shrieks of laughter, and if I
had been in the spirit of the time and place I suppose
I should have laughed too, and there would have been
an end of the matter. But I had been playing a
part, a tragic part, and feeling that I had failed
and covered myself with ridicule, I was overwhelmed
with confusion.

I thought my husband would be angry with me, and feel
compromised by my foolishness, but he was not; he
was amused, and when at last I saw his face it was
running in rivulets from the laughter he could not
restrain.

That was the end of all things, and when Alma came
up to me, saying everything that was affectionate
and insincere, about her “poor dear unfortunate
Margaret Mary” (only women know how to wound
each other so), I brushed her aside, went off to my
bedroom, and lay face down on the sofa, feeling that
I was utterly beaten and could fight no more.

Half an hour afterwards my husband came in, and though
I did not look up I heard him say, in a tone of indulgent
sympathy that cut me to the quick:

“You’ve been playing the wrong part, my
child. A Madonna, yes, but a Venus, no!
It’s not your metier.”

“What’s the good? What’s the
good? What’s the good?” I asked myself.

I thought my heart was broken.

FORTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER

With inexpressible relief I heard the following day
that we were to leave for Rome immediately.

Alma was to go with us, but that did not matter to
me in the least. Outside the atmosphere of this
place, so artificial, so unrelated to nature, her
power over my husband would be gone. Once in the
Holy City everything would be different. Alma
would be different, I should be different, above all
my husband would be different. I should take him
to the churches and basilicas; I should show him the
shrines and papal processions, and he would see me
in my true “part” at last!